Helens-of-Troy (50 page)

“Freaky,” Ellie commented, enthralled
in his story. “SHE was telling him to slow down. “Ciaran,” SHE
said, “watch what you’re doing. You need to get a better sense of
Gaspar’s life force before you finish turning him.” But this Ciaran
guy, he kept saying it was too late for that. I was too far gone.
He told HER he had to work quickly to save my life. Save my life.
That’s a joke.”

“How long did it take? Did he drink all
of your blood?”

“I’m not sure. I know I felt pleasure
and pain for what seemed like an eternity, then he was gone. I
haven’t seen him since. He didn’t even stick around to teach me
anything. I woke up in your grandmother’s office, no longer who I
once was.”

“Was SHE there? I mean, was she
there…when you woke up?”

“Yes. Hovering over me like a pathetic
nursemaid. SHE was crying and blubbering out excuse after excuse.
It’s the only time I’ve ever seen HER a total train
wreck.”

“See, she didn’t really abandon
you.”

“Not then.”

“Then there must be some good in
her.”

“There’s good and bad in everyone,
Ellie. It’s the balance of the two that determines which side of
the fence you’re on.” He shrugged. “I’ve found that need
overshadows will on that trait. It’s too late for me to be one of
those vampires who quietly blend into society, although SHE assures
me they are out there.”

“It’s never too late,
Gaspar.”

“Yeah, it is. As the months go by, I
need more and more blood. Different kinds of blood. A varied menu
as recommended by the national food guide. I guess I can
shape-shift back to a wolf and start attacking pigs and cattle, but
I think even the dumbest human will eventually catch
on.”

“Maybe I could get a part-time job at
the animal hospital. I need money anyway. I could bring you the
animals that, you know…” Her voice trailed off sadly.

“Maybe you could be a farmer,” Gaspar
said without a hint of sarcasm. “But not today, not tomorrow, and
certainly not forever. Thanks anyway, Ellie.”

“Maybe,” Ellie hesitated. “Maybe you
could feed from me. You kind of did before, right? You had a taste
of my blood. It didn’t make you go berserk or anything.”

“If I had more it would,” he explained.
“You’re too old for me,” he laughed sarcastically.

“You said yourself it was a matter of
time before my age wouldn’t bother you. Maybe I’m like an
anti-depressant and you have to take a little everyday before it
begins to work. We could try it. You never know, it might
become—normal for us.”

“But what if I couldn’t control myself
and I went too far?”

“I guess that gives ‘going too far’ a
whole new meaning,” Ellie pondered.

“I don’t know enough about how this
whole things works to know for certain,” he admitted. “Would you be
willing to risk your life? Would you risk becoming like
me?”

Ellie was silent.

“Well, at least you’re honest,” Gaspar
offered.

“Maybe we could run away and find him,”
Ellie offered. “The man who turned you. He must have it figured
out.”

“You’d do that for me?” Gaspar asked.
“You’d leave your safe little world to journey with me to the
unknown?”

“Well, a girl’s got to leave home
sometime,” Ellie shrugged. “If you could hang on until the summer,
that might be easier.”

“But what do I do with you until then?”
he asked.

“You learn to trust,” Ellie shrugged.
“Without trust, there is no relationship.”

“Should I be updating my faceplant
page?” he smirked, kissing her softly on the forehead.

“I think we still have to leave it as
‘it’s complicated’,” Ellie smiled.

Gaspar’s ears perked up. “I think I
heard something outside. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said to her.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he smirked.

Ellie waited for him to leave the
washroom, and then quickly pulled the cell phone from her
pocket.

“Come on, come on,” she said, as she
frantically texted a message. She barely had time to push send to
the last number entered before Gaspar was back in the
room.

“What was it?” Ellie asked nervously,
sliding the phone back into her jeans.

“Things that go bump in the night,” he
replied.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

The drive out to Stillman’s Creek was
an ominous one for the three teenagers. They knew that the road
ahead was full of danger, but they knew they could handle it. What
they didn’t know, was that their false sense of bravado was about
to get them into a whole lot of trouble.

“Kill the engine,” Tom instructed Ryan
as the Toyota approached the bridge.

“Don’t say kill please,” Jacey
answered. “It gives me the jeebies.”

“
I don’t care how horny I
get, I’m not coming back to this place once this day is over,” Ryan
said, as he opened the car door. The smell of the swampy water was
a sensation he’d just as soon forget.

“What’s that smell?” Jacey asked. “It
makes me want to throw up.”

“Stay in the car, Jacey,” Ryan
instructed. He contemplated whether bringing her along was a good
idea in the first place.

“Why? I can run faster than Tom,” she
said, as if reading his mind. “We already established that.” She
got out from the backseat and stood on the snow covered ground
beside Ryan.

“Good point,” Ryan conceded. “Tom, stay
in the car.”

“Why me? She blew up the jail.” He got
out of the Toyota and leaned across the trunk.

“Also a valid point,” he said as he
watched Jacey pull her cell phone from her coat. “What are you
doing, Jacey? This is no time to take a call unless it’s from
1-800-BITEME.”

“Dude, I think you need another digit,”
Tom noted.

“It’s Ellie,” Jacey said excitedly.
“She’s sent me a message. It says ‘bloo’.” She looked questioningly
at Ryan. “What does bloo mean?”

“Gimme that,” he said, pulling the
phone from her hand. He glanced at the screen. “It says b.loo.” He
paused for a moment. “I thought you were British.”

“I am.”

“She’s in the old schoolhouse all
right. She’s trying to tell us she’s in the boy’s
washroom.

“Oh I get it,” Jacey laughed, tilting
her head in the perky manner that drove Ryan insane. “That’s cute,”
she continued. “b.loo, g.loo”. She smiled at Tom, and whether he
found it funny, or whether it was just the nervous tension in the
air, he found himself giggling too.

Ryan exhaled in exasperation. “Look,
both of you girls, stay here. I’ll just have to do it myself.” He
turned to leave.

Jacey unexpectedly grabbed Ryan by the
scruff of his neck and pulled him within inches of her face. “You
listen to me, Ryan Lachey. You might be the big football star at
school, but you didn’t get there all by yourself, no matter what
you think. You had teammates that helped you. I might not be as
fast with my hands as Tommy, but we’re all wearing the same jersey
here.”

“The jersey of the damned,” Tom said
flippantly. “Why don’t we just call the cops?”

“No cops,” Ryan insisted. His level of
trust for Troy’s men in blue had fallen to an all-time
low.

“We all had a part in this,” Jacey
continued, stomping her right foot to emphasize the point. “We all
have to help her.”

“You’ve wrecked your boots, Jace,” Ryan
noticed, looking at her feet. The Jimmy Choo's were wet and torn
and stained with a combination of soot and snow. He didn’t know
whether the world had finally beaten him down or not, but he
actually felt bad for her. Her boots were like a cornerstone in an
old building. They held the key to the past and they needed to be
deconstructed. They might make a good chew toy for Ralph’s
dogs.

“I don’t care,” Jacey said, and the
honesty in her voice surprised all three of them.

“
Okay then. You’re in,” Ryan
agreed.” He looked at Tom. “Well?”

“I don’t have the big locker room
speech to give you,” Tom replied. “But I never said I wanted to
stay in the car, so quit looking at me like that. I never said I
wanted to bail out on you. I’ve never said I wanted to bail out on
you. ”

Ryan reflected this for a moment until
a more urgent issue came over him. “Nature calls. I gotta take a
leak. Alone,” Ryan told them. “Unless we’re all in that together
too?” He waited for Jacey or Tom to comment. “No? So I’m good to
go. Thanks for that.” He walked off into the trees and proceeded to
unzip his fly. “I will never underestimate the freedom of whizzin’
in the wild again,” he told himself, grateful to be out of jail,
albeit illegally. He was re-adjusting himself in the wilds of the
woods when he heard Jacey scream.

“What the fuck?” he wondered, turning
around towards his friends. Subconsciously knowing it was time to
hide, he ducked down behind the nearest bush. Its leafless limbs
didn’t offer much camouflage, but it was better than
nothing.

There were two hulking creatures in
what was left of their police uniforms standing in front of Tom and
Jacey. They were big, and they were blond, but their similarity
with anything human stopped there. It was the Daytons, but then
again, not the Daytons. The twins were “Hulk-ified.”

“Again, what the fuck?” Ryan said to
himself. He crept as far to the edge of the thicket as he could
without revealing himself. He watched as Cody— at least he thought
it was Cody—pushed Tom effortlessly to the ground. The wraith
shoved his boot firmly on Tom’s back, holding him down as he
reached reached around for his handcuffs. Tom’s brief attempt to
struggle was met with a swift kick to the ribs by Cody’s other
foot. Ryan heard his friend scream in pain, an audible reflex that
resulted in another boot to his side.

Colin had Jacey pinned to the ground as
well. He was straddling her, his legs pressed against her thighs
like a vice. “Look at the pretty girl,” Ryan could hear him snarl,
in a demonic voice. “Pretty little missy, makes me want to
kissy.”

Ryan instinctively wanted to rush to
help them, but if he had learned anything over the past few days,
it was that the old saying ‘fools rush in’, was sage advice. There
was no way he could get to his friends without being seen in
advance of any attempted attack. The wraiths had guns and handcuffs
and quite possibly supernatural powers, and he had nothing. He had
never felt more helpless in his life.

Held to the ground, Jacey froze in
terror, as the wraith took his sopping tongue and licked her cheek
in a slow, lingering motion. “Why are you crying, pretty girl?” he
taunted, his sour breath making her flinch. “I’ll give you
something to cry about.”

The wraith moved his tongue above his
top gum line, where something lay hidden in his upper right cheek
pocket. He maneuvered the object down to between his front teeth,
glowering menacingly in her line of sight as he revealed the
disposable razor blade he had deftly kept hidden. He tore it across
the surface of his own bottom lip, making it bleed before the
girl’s eyes, eliminating any possible doubt as to whether it was
sharp or not. He moved closer towards her, projecting the edge of
the blade within inches of her cheek, and sadistically watched as
she began to sob uncontrollably.

“You should have accepted my affection,
you stuck-up bitch,” he screeched, as he swiftly moved the blade
across her left cheek tearing her flesh in a straight
slice.

“Leave her alone, you fucking bastard,”
Tom screamed at him.

Cody Dayton looked at him and laughed.
“I visited your daddy’s hardware store today,” he said. “I needed a
new razor too,” he said, pulling a pack of disposable razors from
his pocket. He grabbed Tom by the hair and began to hack away at
his blonde locks in a haphazard fashion. When he had shorn most of
it, he pulled Tom’s head back so he could admire his handiwork.
“This looks like crap, pretty-boy,” he said, and began to shave
away what was left of Tom’s streaked tresses. “Get up,” he
instructed him, “and show your girlfriend your new
hairdo.”

“Go to hell,” Tom shouted.

“I said get up,” Cody repeated, pulling
his pistol from his holster and pointing it at Tom’s
head.

Colin made the same request of Jacey,
putting the gun next to her temple so she would be certain to hear
the safety being released. “Let’s go for a little walk,” he said to
her, pulling her up from the ground by her elbow. He shoved her in
front of him and hit her head with the side of the gun, indicating
to her to take the path on the right. She had no choice but to do
so. Tom and Cody followed behind them.

Ryan’s viewpoint from the thicket
indicated that the four were headed towards the old schoolhouse. If
he stayed calm, and moved quietly through the edge of the woods, he
could most likely get there undetected. “They’re big,” he muttered
to himself, sizing up the wraiths. “But they’re still butt-ass
half-deaf morons.” As he watched the four enter through the nearest
side entrance, Ryan made his way around to the far end of the
school, to an area big enough to be a gymnasium. The doors were
chained together.